I'm a big Marvel fan and with limited illustration skills I relied more heavily on typography principles.
This is an exploration in type, and more specifically colour, as each character in the Marvel (or hero) universe has a very particular colour scheme. Since I'm just having fun, I'm mostly trying out different art styles which is really fun trying to learn and change really rapidly between each work.

Monday, July 23, 2012

PBS Off Book
I am really starting to fall in love with PBS' Off Book (@PBSoffbook) series and the different topics they cover. Here are a few of the more interesting ones that are typography-related.

Books on Typography

This list of 10 Essential Books on Typography by Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings (which is one of my favourite sites for learning and overall good stuff) is a good list for typography fans and enthusiasts. One of the recommendations listed is Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. I have to admit it's one of my beloved typography books especially because it was the required textbook for my first graphic design course. I highly recommend it as the first book for those just starting to learn typography or graphic design! =D

Matthew Olin showed his project, Superhero Typographic Classifications, at his MFA Thesis Exhibition in Dec 2011 with a series of typographic posters and correlating classifications of typefaces with specific superheroes relating characteristics between both to let people connect the qualities and drawing the similarities within the paired relations.

The title of the book makes the allusion to my point in the previous post of how societal norms is an extroverted world. I'm glad I looked this book up on Amazon though as one of the comments has given potential future avenues of research into discovering different types of introverts.

I love this book. Cain has enlightened me on how people have internalized the values of extroversion and society-driven expectations that everyone should have an outgoing personality. Society has given rise to the outspoken individual usually becoming the ones rising to roles of leadership regardless if they are the ones who have the best ideas or qualifications. For me, this drives at the underlying concept beneath the social norms that drives me to be more talkative even when I don't feel comfortable doing so, and wonder why it's driving me to do so after the fact.

Introversion and extroversion is commonly stereotyped as the only two polar personality types, but Quiet delves into the deeper discussion of exploring the personality attribute as a spectrum. It's given me a better understanding of myself and where I fall in the spectrum and allowed a flash of insight into why I feel like I fluctuate between the two opposites (and rather how it's moving in between different points in the spectrum). Identifying who we are as individuals on this spectrum is critical to comprehending ourselves in forming our identity, and after doing so, allows for strategy in putting ourselves in the optimal environment with the appropriate amount of stimulation. (The idea of stimulation is explained in the book of how introverts/extroverts require different amounts of stimulation).

I have learned some considerations that I will apply into my future relationships in dealing with people as this has allowed me to open my mind in understanding how people function. What I will take most is to apply this knowledge when dealing with group dynamics and making sure to listen even more carefully to those who are quiet and making sure that the volume of those who like to talk isn't forcing me to only listen to them.